How Bridges Mental Health Came to Be

We just posted a version of this to the @bridgesmentalhealth IG so I thought I’d share a more personal take on the origins of Bridges Mental Health, which emerged as a "Wouldn't it be nice if..." thought, but really only came to be due to equal parts luck, a meeting of minds with my incredibly talented and passionate co-founders Christie Kim and Samantha Waldman, and the guidance and support of many others.

In August of 2019, I mused to a friend that my clients were increasingly Asian American individuals that sought me out specifically because I was Asian. They shared stories of being misunderstood, invalidated, or worse, having to do the labor of educating non-Asian therapists who lacked an understanding of how intersecting identities impact mental health. They were seeking compassionate understanding, and instead felt unseen or minimized by the providers to whom they had looked for healing and support. They also mentioned how difficult it was to find me at all. It seemed surprising that in a city like NYC, where there is such a concentration of Asian Americans, that finding an Asian therapist would be so challenging.

I wondered how difficult it would be to develop a directory of therapists that have competence in working with Asian Americans. With encouragement from friends, validation and advice from the generous Fay Brezel at OKClarity, and some basic Squarespace coding skills (if you can call that coding), I set out to find all the amazing Asian therapists in the NYC-area and connect them to therapy-seekers through a web site directory.

I’m not going to lie; there were so many challenges on the web development end, which I very quickly realized was not my forte. It took weeks of cycling through different templates to get a landing page and one listing up. (WordPress is not for the wannabe web site designer.)

It was pretty discouraging, so I turned my attention to outreach as that seemed more promising. I searched through endless pages of Psychology Today profiles. I used LinkedIn. I posted in countless Facebook and Google therapist groups. I reached out to schools, clinics, and former colleagues. SO many therapists responded with enthusiasm for the project, which renewed my motivation to push forward as I had really started to feel overwhelmed, deflated, and unsure about how I’d actually develop the web site on my own.

Then, almost as if I’d conjured them up, two therapists replied to my outreach email, not only expressing excitement, but also that they had been working on an almost identical idea. They asked if we might meet to discuss potentially working together.

Christie Kim, Samantha Waldman, and I had our first meeting in October 2019 at Ole & Steen, shared our visions for the project, and immediately decided to join forces. It felt like a fortuitous alignment of skills, with Christie patiently and skillfully building out the site; Samantha ideating, writing, and editing our content; and me building our therapist network and spreading the word about our project. We’ve since continued to meet every two weeks to work on Bridges Mental Health—to create a stigma-free resource for Asian, Pacific Islander, and South Asian Americans to discuss, navigate, and seek mental health care. During this time, we weathered a pandemic, experiencing our own challenges as full-time therapists navigating teletherapy, inconsistent interstate licensing regulations, and of course, burnout. We also witnessed and personally encountered increased harassment and violence towards Asian Americans.

The events of the past year and a half have only reaffirmed our belief about the need for a resource like Bridges. We must acknowledge and honor the power, impact, and undeniable importance of East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander stories, stories that far too often go unheard.

Our stories matter. Our rest matters. Our healing matters. 

We encourage you to find those safe people, communities, and spaces, whatever they may be, where you can tend to them.